"When Guy Simpson woke up with a bad headache in January, he thought his sinuses were acting up.

Two weeks later, when the headaches got worse and other symptoms appeared, the Fort Erie resident went to his family doctor.

He sent him to an eye doctor, who sent him for a CAT scan in Niagara Falls. He was told his symptoms were neurological and he needed an MRI.

On Feb. 2, Simpson, 49, was given an MRI date of April 15.

With the help of a friend, he managed to push up his appointment with a neurologist from April 1 to Feb. 23.

By Feb. 9, he was bedridden and in unbearable pain.

His family doctor tried to get an emergency MRI at St. Catharines General Hospital and sent Simpson to the ER with a note.

In St. Catharines, Simpson was told his family doctor didn't have the authority to order an MRI. He was told he had a head injury and the condition would improve on its own.

Meanwhile, another doctor managed to move his MRI date up to April 1.

When he got the results April 6, he was told he had a large, possibly cancerous tumour around his pituitary gland compressing the nerves in his eye and extending into his sinuses and wrapped around his carotid artery.

His doctor pushed for an appointment with a neurologist for a body MRI to check for the spread of cancer. The earliest date for that MRI was in August. He got an appointment with the neurologist for April 28.

He was told by the neurologist he needed surgery, but no date was set.

By May 18, Simpson started to have trouble breathing. His wife wanted to call an ambulance, but worried they'd end up sitting in the St. Catharines ER for hours, so she called his doctor, who had him admitted immediately to Hamilton General Hospital.

He had an MRI and a CAT scan within hours. He'd been bedridden for weeks at this point.

He was scheduled for emergency surgery, but it was cancelled three times.

"The way it was explained to me, I was critical but I wasn't at the priority of the critical list, so they were taking priority patients ahead of me.

"It was a 10-day wait before I had surgery," he told me in a phone interview.

On May 26, five months after his symptoms started, surgeons removed a large portion of the cancerous tumour. He came home June 4 and was told also he had an aggressive form of lymphoma and had only weeks to live.

"If I'd had the MRI earlier, which the first couple of doctors I saw were pushing for, I feel I would have been diagnosed earlier," Simpson said.

"I don't think it would have got into my lymph nodes and spread to the rest of my body."

So far, though, he's beating the odds.

The Liberal government has gutted health care in the Niagara Region. Beds have been closed, ER departments either shut down or turned into walk-in clinics.

Simpson read a recent column I wrote about patients being sent to Buffalo for neurosurgery. He wasn't offered that option.

We brag about our universal health-care system. When that universe doesn't include places like Niagara, you have to think this is a health system that's on the ropes."*Funny how Jim Bradley can't be found for a comment... you can just imagine, though, the indignant uproar which would have erupted from sanctimonious Ole Jim had this happened during Harris' tenure!!But now, miraculously, this has nothing at all to do with Jim Bradley!! Now, Ole Jimmy's done been vanished, guldarnit.Where is Good Ole Jimmy's response to this story, which has revealed yet another example of his Liberal health-care monopoly's failure?These Liberal health-care horror stories keep on piling up, sequel after grisly sequel.Secretive Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley WILL NOT REVEAL how many Ontario patients are being exported to the United States for medical treatment which mysteriously was not readily available in Ontario's single-payer, Liberal-enforced healthscare TM system.Liberals Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor are certainly the ones around here in Niagara who have 'bragged' (more like LIED) about the superiority of their monstrous single-payer health-care monopoly.Jim Bradley, along with the rest of McGuinty's slimy duplicitous Liberals, have smugly laughed at Buffalo for years, deriding their health-care system - and then shuffling patients to Buffalo and other American medical facilities because the Liberal health-monopoly couldn't provide the necessary care here in Ontario!The real horror story in Niagara and the rest of Ontario is how health-care-cutting, single-payer-monopoly-enforcing Liberal goons such as Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, Dalton McGuinty and Deb Matthews have been lying to us.*ps: no need to let Michael Moore or Dukakis know about any of this...!*

"It was inevitable, once Ontario's first Afro-centric school became reality, that disputes about race would ensue. That's what segregation does: It creates divisions between people based on race.

At issue is the Toronto District School Board's controversial suspension of the school's popular principal, Thando Hyman-Aman.

Hyman-Aman went on leave in late October, following a complaint by a parent. The nature of the complaint is not public. The board has said only that it carried out an investigation, which is now over. Hyman-Aman is expected to return to work.

Parents, understandably, are upset. They want to know why the principal was removed, and the nature of the complaint, Many parents, according to reports, strongly support her. A minority are disaffected.

Will the people of Ontario, who are paying for this school, ever get a full accounting? Not likely. The TDSB has already been scolded by a local citizen's group, the Jane and Finch Concerned Citizens Organization, for daring to appoint a white man as Hyman-Aman's temporary stand-in.

Let's parse this. It's an Afro-centric school, teaching an Afro-centric curriculum. Students of all races are technically eligible to attend. What about teachers? "I'm sure he's a nice man but the optics are bad and it couldn't have happened at a worse time," an official from the Jane-Finch group was quoted as saying in the Globe and Mail.

The optics of having a white man replacing a black woman are undoubtedly lousy, if we're talking about running a school for black kids. But what if the replacement were of mixed race? What if he were South Asian, with a dark skin tone, but not of African origin?

These impossible questions emerge naturally from the school's founding premise, which is that black students will do better in a segregated environment. That is a racist notion, at odds with Canadian values. This country has a Charter of Rights that outlaws discrimination based on race.
Isn't segregation a form of discrimination?Canada already has one segregationist, racist institution in the form of the Indian Act. Segregation and special status under the law haven't worked for aboriginal Canadians. Why not?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character," said Martin Luther King, Jr.Amen to that. We should have one public school system"*
What's this??
Jim Bradley and his Liberals founded a publicly-funded school in Ontario based on a regressive racist notion of colour segregation?!
Well, yes: segregation became the McGuinty Liberals' shameless new 'separate-but-equal' education frontier.
Remember how the smug Liberal education minister Kathleen Wynne, and Dalton McGuinty, and Good Ole Jimmy, smarmed on and on about how faith-based educational-funding was divisive and regressive and segregationist and a threat to social cohesion in Ontario!!?
And remember how - within months of their re-election - McGuinty's Liberal hypocrites deliberately went ahead and created a new brand of regressive racial educational apartheid in Ontario?!
So... how did all that work out, Jim?
Will any local St.Catharines Standard reporter bother examining Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's duplicitous educational fear-mongering?
*

"Niagara Regional Police have put the service's two-horse mounted unit out to pasture.

The decision was made Thursday during a closed-door meeting of the police services board.

The mounted unit, launched formally as a pilot project two years ago, was largely ceremonial.

While the cost of taking care of the horses and operating the unit was relatively low — roughly $40,000 annually — police board member Mal Woodhouse repeatedly pushed for the expense to be axed as a symbolic gesture each year during budget deliberations.

Members of the police services board recently approved a draft budget of $127.5 million for the year ahead, representing an increase of 5.48%."

*

I often saw one of the NRP's horses, named Brock, while he was taken out on patrol in and around Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls. Brock was one solid Percheron horse (just look at his stance in the photo below) who had a good disposition and was very friendly. He was also very fast, as I'd see him being put through his paces, going from stand-still to a running gallop through the park. He also followed instructions well, doing all kinds of nuanced front-back-sideways moves, stepping very deliberately and slowly, in whichever way the officer directed. I saw Brock meticulously follow prompts, for example, to step up onto a large boulder, one leg at a time, and then to step down, following varying commands - told to leave one front leg on the rock, but step down with the other legs, or, to leave both front legs on the ground, with the rear still on the rock, etc. etc... I was allowed to give him part of an apple once (he had made it clear he was very interested in it!) and the next times I saw him, I swear I think he remembered me. There were so many tourists who were instantly drawn to him, and would come over to pet him and to talk with the officer. Kids especially seemed to be in awe of him and loved to have their pictures taken with him. Brock was a real goodwill ambassador for Niagara.

Brock is now apparently going to be sold off by the police service, who had bought him (along with Juno, the other NRP mounted unit's horse) for $10,000 back in 2008. I hope a good home is found for these horses.

When Tom Blackwell wrote (in "Private role in hospitals no longer taboo", National Post, Nov.25, 2010) of Liberals who smugly proclaimed that they stood against "the Americanization of our hospitals", he was pretty much describing the hypocrisy of secretive St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim 'I hate doctors' Bradley - see:

above: Ukrainian World Congress Committee for International Holodomor Awareness and Ukrainian Canadian Congress card asking Ukraine's own President, Viktor Yanukovych (see photo at bottom for an explanation) to publicly recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

"Intense hunger had driven the Neufeld family in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, to the brink.

Every grinding day brought an overwhelming need to find something to fill their stomachs.

Jacob Neufeld was born during those awful times of the Holodomor in 1933.

That year and the year before, a Soviet-created famine likely killed between seven million and 10 million people in the Ukraine.

People on Soviet-controlled collective farms starved and died as food was confiscated and exported from the region.

Countless others were executed or exiled to the Gulags for food possession, private land owning or farming crimes and trumped-up political charges.

It is an atrocity, recounted by Neufeld's late parents Jacob and Helen, that the St. Catharines resident will never forget.

"It all led to an unbelievable path of misery and suffering," said Neufeld, whose Mennonite German family were longtime inhabitants of that part of Ukraine. "Men, women, children all died by the millions."

His father was a bookkeeper and the family of one sister and three brothers lived decent lives.

Things went downhill after Jacob Sr. was arrested by the Soviets as an enemy of the state and sent to a slave labour camp in Siberia. This was also during the Holodomor.

Helen, who lost her privileges to work in a collective farm because of her husband's "crime," acted heroically to keep the family alive.

In an interview inside his home, Jacob Jr., 77, grows quiet and steels himself for an intense story of survival, family separation and finally emigration to St. Catharines.

"Hunger set in, we lived very poorly," he said. "My mother went from door to door to ask for milk.

"It was difficult for our family and there were millions of others that went through hard or harder times -- many died."

He remembers the kindness of the Ukrainian village baker Anton, who saw the family's plight and slipped them a loaf of bread every so often.

"That was a fantastic deed," he said. "We have to remember there were many people who were also very compassionate."

Neufeld is still in contact with the late Anton's family.

In the end, only nine-month-old twin brother John died of unknown causes. Years later, Jacob Sr. was released, a physically broken man.

By the early part of the Second World War, there were more family arrests and the conscription of his mother and sister to dig trenches.

The turning point came as an eight-year-old, then living in the care of two women.

He remembers strolling inconsolably through his farmhouse.

"I walked through that empty house," Jacob said. "I sat down on the front porch and cried. I wondered what had happened to my family; where they had gone to."

At that moment, his father and brother Andrey -- unexpectedly freed following an arrest -- returned to the home. His mother and sister soon followed.

In 1949, the family immigrated to Niagara -- all except for Andrey, who was arrested again by the Soviets, sent to a Gulag and reappeared 13 years later in Kazakhstan. Henry now lives in Hamburg, Germany.

Jacob Jr. created a new life in Canada as a home builder. He is married to Frida, and the couple have three adult children.

They, too, will be remembering National Holodomor Awareness Week, which continues until Sunday. Numerous events, including some in St. Catharines, will mark the 77th anniversary of the famine genocide.

Neufeld says one very proud moment was being part of the 2009 Ukraine memorial set up by Canadian Mennonites to also remember those who died in Soviet times.

"We must never forget what has happened," he said, his voice thick. "Our children will learn from that, and they do."

People should appreciate living in Canada, he added.

"We have had many Thanksgiving days, where we thank God we're able to live in this country and have the freedom that thousands still don't have."

Alexandra Sawchuk, a local representative of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, said it's essential to pass on these stories.

Otherwise, its true horror gets lost and diluted through the passage of time and the loss of survivors.

"It's very important for us to always remember them," she said.""*Yet, George Bernard Shaw - socialist hero; Stalin admirer - denied that any genocide happened in the Great Soviet Socialist Experiment.*

Also noteworthy is that on Jun.2, 2010, Quebec's National Assembly unanimously passed a bill which recognizes that the Holodomor was an act of genocide.*Below is an excerpt from The Ukrainian Weekly, Jun.13, 2010, of Stephen Bandera's take on Yanukovych being the first Ukrainian president to DENY the Holdomor:.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

“I’m eating my cookie – can’t you see I’m eating my cookie?”If Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has any sense, these will go down as the famous last words in the career of one Dr. Stephen Duckett, President and CEO Alberta Health Services (AHS). Dr. Duckett made the remarks to reporters on Nov. 19, after a meeting about hospital wait times and overcrowded emergency rooms. Journalists wanted answers to some simple questions; Dr. Duckett wanted to stuff his mouth with starch. The ensuing exchange has the entire province talking about the CEO’s arrogance, the dire state of the province’s health-care system, and what to do next.To date, the incident has been seen by over 70,000 viewers on YouTube, and countless others on television newscasts. The next day, Dr. Duckett issued an apology on his website, but didn’t face the media. He wrote, “I’m sorry. I know I got it wrong this time.” The provincial health minister, Gene Zwozdesky, stated that the AHS Board Chair will look into the comments, but that he retains confidence in his cookie-chomping CEO. Premier Ed Stelmach blogged that “Albertans are tiring of the recent theatrics which have garnered most of the attention, and so am I.”Talk about missing the point. Dr. Duckett’s fit of pique wasn’t a case of theatrics – it was a case of poor judgment. Not punishing it is a similar error. The CEO’s arrogant performance comes at a sensitive time: On Oct. 22, 2010, a letter from the head of emergency services for the Alberta Medical Association, Paul Parks, was leaked to the media. It warned that emergency rooms faced “potential catastrophic collapse … There must be intervention immediately.” The letter unleashed a public furor as stories emerged about 20-hour emergency room waits, a woman having her cervix examined in view of other patients, and a heart patient dying while waiting for treatment.Ironically, the day before Dr. Duckett morphed into the cookie monster, Raj Sherman, the parliamentary assistant to the health minister blamed the agency he heads for this situation. “They’ve got the biggest (budgetary) pay raise in history to deliver health care. They’ve been given the best staff in the nation … The leadership in AHS needs to inspire the frontline staff.” The current tab for Mr. Duckett’s leadership clocks in at $575,000 a year in salary, plus up to $144,000 in bonuses.But it’s not just Alberta officials who fiddle while Rome burns. There are health horror stories from one end of the country to the other, from care to cash. In Quebec, emergency room wait times average close to 20 hours; on Sept. 30, a diabetic man died after waiting 7 hours for care. At the same time, on Nov. 18, a report issued by the Conference Board of Canada concluded that Quebec’s health-care system will consume 63% of that province’s budget by 2030-31.Next door, things are apparently worse: according to the Fraser Institute, Ontario’s spending on health care would require 100% of its own projected source revenue by 2030. Meanwhile, just last year, an audit revealed successive Ontario governments wasted $1-billion on an eHealth project that produced no results.It’s no wonder that the population gets angry when confronted with the arrogant attitude of a Dr. Duckett. Paying more and getting less is an unacceptable state of affairs, particularly when it comes to health care.Of course, the elephant in the room is the whole notion that our state-funded, single payer monopoly system is sustainable. Politicians are just as pig-headed about this as Dr. Duckett was about eating his cookie, refusing to talk about alternatives even though polls show an increasing appetite for private insurance and user fees. Instead, they try to patch a broken system, devoid of competition and incentive for improvement, with predictable results.Albert Einstein famously quipped, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Mr. Stelmach and his fellow premiers should heed that advice. At the end of the day, you cannot have your cookie and eat it, too."*

Lost in the uproar over Duckett, people conveniently overlook Shitbag Liberal Premier Liar of Ontario Dalton McGuinty's smarmy episode of ignoring the concerns of cancer patient Mike Brady while McGuintywas shamelessly trolling a hospital lobby in Toronto looking for votes!!

How different from Duckett's was Dalton's attitude of 'I'm walking away... walking awa-aaay... can't hear you, you ungrateful cancer patient... get lost, buddy - can't you see I'm trolling for votes here?'

The cookie crumbled favourably for McGuinty, because, naturally, he's a Liberal, and therefore can do no wrong. Why, he's good-hearted, doncha know!! Duckett, on the other hand, is evil, 'cause he's not a Liberal. [30!] [Say no more!] [Word]

Dalton McGuinty's Liberal health-care-monopolist scumbag liars do the same thing over and over again - who ever gives them Einstein's advice?!*ps - don't tell Michael Moore or Dukakis about the wait times in Canada's health-care nirvana... shhhh.*

Love that St.Catharines Standard Nov.23, 2010 front page story about McMullan's dour brownshirtsbanning signs. [Hydro increase? What hydro increase?! Why should we bother to interview Jim Bradley about that?! Jim 'the environmentalist's saint' Bradley is building windmills and nukes to save Mother Earth!!! So leave Good Ole Jimmy alone!!]The best headline last week goes to the Toronto Star which (mis)reported/spun/twisted the real story of McGuinty's newest electricity rate-gouge with this classic lead: "Liberals to cut hydro bills by 10%" (yeah: read that again!!)The Liberals actually RAISED the hydro rate by 46% !!But the Star and Jim Bradley would like you to believe that the Liberals are magically CUTTING a fictitious 10%. Yep, a bit of sleight-of-hand, some accounting trapeze work, a bit of juggling and lying, and voila - lookit that: Jim 'Duplicity' Bradley just deceived us once again, promising one thing while delivering something else altogether, in classic Liberal two-faced style! And the beauty for Jim is that he's using our own money to bribe us for his re-election!! (Yeah: 'it's a cut... c'mon, trust me'!)No wonder those politically-challenged people suffering under Boyle's law can't understand the lies and spin which McGuinty and his acolytes dump out on a daily basis: 'Yep, Ole McGinnerthare'sgwaana CUT da 'lectricality fer us by 10 percent, by gawrsh... da Star done been sed it, so's its gotta be true..."hahaha... oh, that Toronto Red Star... always Jim Bradley's best friend: when a 46% increase becomes a heroic 10 % DECREASE, the Star is there to wipe Jimmy's ass.Hey - it's now official: Jim Bradley's Liberals now contain 46% more shit.*

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Interesting comments by RMAT in the National Post comments (Nov.20, 2010):

"Ontario NDP leader Horwath says people can't afford the HST on hydro bills while her federal counter part supports the greenwashing that's responsible for the bulk of hydro rate increases. When carbon trade gets implemented, the bills will go up again. Meanwhile Taliban JAck says it was undemocratic for the "unelected " senate to kill the Climate Bill passed by the toika's majority in the house. When did the Canadian public give the troika a mandate to go beyond "kyoto"?

Ontario could have put up-to-date scrubbers on the coal plants for a fraction of the cost. But since scrubbers don't take out CO2, they build high priced wind farms and solar. We are killing more jobs than we are creating... meanwhile..."the global coal trade would grow significantly during the next few decades, with total thermal seaborne coal demand set to increase from 680-million tons to 1,1-billion tons between 2010 and 2025." And Ontarians are going to save the planet by freezing in the dark (at least those who don't work for public sector with cost of living increases and indexed pensions- the NDP core support)?

Ontario energy minister was on CBC telling us make the sacrifice fo the sake of creating a better world for grandkids. Those starving farmers who are leasing lands to industrial wind farms are exposing their kids to 3x recommended noise levels and resulting health impacts(sorry, but government's EP rules don't protect kids whose parents sign leases with wind farm developers). Those gas plants in the GTA that back up the wind turbines are poisoning the kids with their emissions. And they tell us they are doing this for the kids."

Horwath and Layton should get their stories straight. Layton's whining about the planet being destroyed by Al Gore's fictional floods is really tiresome. Layton 'going beyond Kyoto' is socialism going beyond the pale. McGuinty ignored clean coal (no such thing, argue the greensheviks) so scrubbers weren't a Liberal priority - seeing as they weren't designed to clean the fictitious evil Co2, but actual real pollutants! So making Co2 an evil became a precondition for Al Gore and his greenshevik acolytes to attempt to corner the carbon-trading market.

George Smitherman was brought in by McGuinty to trot out the Liberal GreenWash Energy Act, and to lie about what it would cost.

"The province will be in the red for another eight years (at least), and net debt has risen from $138-billion seven years ago (28.2% of GDP) to $220-billion this year (37.2% of GDP) -- almost $17,000 for every person in Ontario.

This is in large measure because of spending under the McGuinty government, which has risen to $116-billion this year, 21.3% of GDP, up from 16.2% when Mr. McGuinty came to power in 2003.

Hydro bills are on the rise, in part because of the Liberal Green Energy Act.

The act offers absurdly generous 20-year payments to solar and wind power producers (between 44.3¢ and 71.3¢ per kilowatt hour for solar and between 13.5¢ and 19¢ for wind. This compares with the average weighted price for electricity of 4.02¢).

Rather than reducing an already crippling debt load that costs taxpayers $9.7-billion a year to service, the McGuinty government is prepared to increase the burden on the next generation to pay for its own poorly conceived and badly implemented green energy policies."

*

Ivisonabove clearly outlines the costs - paid by the taxpayer - which the moronic Liberals are spending to implement Smitherman'sGreenWash fiasco.

So now, take a look at what Smitherman told us back on May 27, 2009, about his GritShitTMGreenCrapTM Energy Fiasco:

"Let me say a word about price. The weighted average market price for electricity in 2008 was 5.2 cents a kilowatt hour, down from 7.2 cents in 2005, and less than the average price of 5.5 cents since the market opened seven years ago. About 40% of Ontario’s electricity production is subject to regulation. This has contributed significantly to stable prices for Ontario consumers."

McGuinty and Smitherman were gladly agreeing to pay absurd, rigged premiums to shove their GritShitEnergyTM down our throats, with long term contracts paying up to 71 cents for electricity which is sold for 4 cents. George 'bait-and-switch'Smitherman was telling Ontarians that his GreenWashed pack of lies were only going to cost us a 1% increase; now we see it's going to be at least a 46% increase!! Is this insanity, or just plain Liberal energy duplicity and incompetence?

The joke now is that you get these McGuinty-subsidized solar panels set up on your roof, then install some stadium lights aimed at the panels - day and night! - and voila, you'll be raking in the dough.

Friday, November 19, 2010

"In a way that Canadians do not like to recognize, modern history has already passed stark and sobering judgment on Canadian medicare.

Despite the system's popularity and iconic status; despite the belief by many Canadian health experts that the Canada Health Act system, a single-payer government monopoly, is the best way to deliver modern healthcare; and despite years of nationalist proclamation that Canadian health insurance ought to be a model to the world (and especially to the United States), no country has adopted the Canadian model.

In the eyes of the world, Cuba and North Korea perhaps excepted, Canadian medicare is not a model. The vast majority of global healthcare experts — led, of course, by those who designed healthcare reform in the United States — do not consider the Canadian system to be a practical ideal.

While Canada is widely perceived as a high-achieving global participant in many areas of biomedical research — a capacity that predated and has developed largely independently of the medicare system — it is not clear that there is parallel respect and demand for other areas of Canadian health-care expertise. Canada has not stood particularly high in various attempts to rate the quality of national healthcare systems, ranging from the World Health Organization's highly controversial standings, through recent comparisons that have us vying with the United States for bottom status.

Put more bluntly, since 1968 Canada does not seem to have generated much in the way of exportable health insurance excellence..."*Well, at least we can be assured that Liberal MPP Jim Bradley [...whose Liberals have developed a habit of exporting patients to the States, because their Liberal health monopoly can't provide for them in Ontario...] doesn't find his ownLiberal health care duplicity 'problematic'.Jim 'I hate doctors' Bradley won't bother to discuss Bliss' views.As with his doomsday global-warming-climate-change-carbon-footprint Kyodiotic greenshevist gobbledygook, Bradley must find his Liberal brand of authoritarian despotism soothing.*

"Ontario's economic update is in -- and the provincial Liberals' desperation level clearly is up. In advance of the update, provincial Finance Minister Dwight Duncan already had leaked the Liberals' plan to cut Hydro bills by 10% for five years by using $1-billion in borrowed money. That populist sop would be ill-advised under any circumstances, but especially so given Ontario's projected 2010 deficit of $18.7-billion.

In 2003, Premier Dalton Mc-Guinty declared: "I won't lower your taxes, but I won't raise them either." Well, he kept the first promise; but as for the second -- not so much. In 2004, he subjected Ontarians to an annual health tax of up to $900 per family. Over the next few years, he increased various licensing fees, including those for cars, boats, hunting and fishing. In 2009, he instituted up-front "recycling fees" on a host of items, and in 2010 attempted to bring the second wave of his "ecotax" (which he had to withdraw amid howls of protest). And of course, he also introduced the Ontario HST, which has been calculated to cost the average family in the province an extra $480 a year.

And now there's the hydro bait-and-switch, which will be paid for by future taxpayers. If Mr. McGuinty thinks this shortsighted stunt will put the province's opposition Tories in a corner, he is wrong: Paying for this rate cut with borrowed money fools nobody."

Sadly, Ontario's Liberal Premier Liar and Serial Grifter Dalton McGuinty has fooled, and will continue to fool, many Ontarians with his con-artist duplicity.

More on McGuinty's bait and switch energy policies with Ronald Zajac's report on Nov.19, 2010:

"The hydro rate cut in the Liberal government's fall economic update is a scam, Leeds-Grenville MPP Steve Clark said Friday.

"It's nothing but an attempted bait-and-switch on Ontario families," the Tory MPP said as he came out swinging against Thursday's fall fiscal outlook from Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.

"I don't think Ontarians are going to be fooled by getting a 10-per-cent reduction when hydro rates are going up by 46 per cent," said Clark.

Liberals defended the hydro rebate as way to help struggling Ontarians while aiming for cleaner energy.

The government will bring in the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit on Jan. 1, giving a 10-per-cent break on electricity rates to households, small businesses and farmers, but that will be more than offset by an expected 46-per-cent increase in the cost of hydro over the next five years.

In practice, the hydro rate cut will cost Ontario taxpayers $6.4 billion over the next five years, even as hydro ratepayers see their bills jump about 3.6 per cent annually on top of that over the same period.

The rate hike suggests an average household could pay an additional $50 in the first year alone with the bill going up every year.

According to the Ontario government, investments in modern and renewable energy will cause electricity prices to rise by 46 per cent over the next five years. After that, prices are expected to moderate once the province has completed most of the transition to cleaner, more reliable electricity.

As for the overall budget, the government does not expect to be back in the black until 2017-18, and Duncan's economic statement revealed the Ontario deficit this year will be $18.7 billion, a reduction of $1 billion from its original projection.

Coincidentally, the hydro rebates will cost the province about $1 billion in 2011.

The government credits a stronger-than-expected economy for a boost in Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) revenues of $326 million.

Clark said that HST benefit was achieved on the backs of families and business, and is barely a drop in the bucket of a still massive deficit.

In fact, said Clark, the combined deficit for the nine other provinces is $12.4 billion.

"Our deficit is over six billion dollars more than the rest of Canada combined," added Clark.

"That's ridiculous."

The Tory MPP reiterated his party's line that Premier Dalton McGuinty and his government have mismanaged the province's economy from the start.

"It was a desperate economic statement by a government that, we've said all along, is just making it up as it's going along," said Clark.

Nearby Liberal MPP John Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands) defended the hydro rebate on Thursday.

"We've listened to the people and we're doing something about (rising hydro rates)," Gerretsen, the minister of consumer services, told QMI Agency. "Any time we have cleaner air and lower electricity rates is good news."

"We realize that electricity has gone up. Families at the lower end of the economic scale are affected most by energy rates," said Gerretsen.

The other piece of good news, said Gerretsen, was that as of October, Ontario had regained 75 per cent of the jobs lost during the global recession that hit in the fall of 2008.

Since May 2009, employment has increased by 2.9 per cent or 186,000 net new jobs.

Greg Best, president of the Leeds-Grenville Provincial Liberal Association, defended the controversial HST, saying the McGuinty Liberals are implementing the measure in conjunction with the federal Conservative government.

The HST aims to broaden the tax base "so we don't penalize manufacturing," said Best, adding the long-term gain from this politically difficult measure will be better-paying jobs as the province attracts industry."

Let's have look at George Smitherman's lies when he was Dalton McGuinty's Minister of Green Energy Propaganda.

Beware: reading this report... [from the Committee Transcripts: Standing Committee on Estimates, May 27, 2009, Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, see here] ... is enough to make one sick upon recollecting Smitherman'seco-vomit; it's also illustrative of McGuinty'scontinuingmoronic, ideological climate change presumptions.

All the sickening Liberal climate-change-carbon-footprint-fear-mongering bureaucratized bullshit is there for you to read, as you puke at the green bolshevism of it all. (Al Gore's Chicago-based cosy little carbon-trading scam just collapsed recently - funny how the GreenTeamsters at the St.Catharines Standard didn't bother to report that!! Why - that's not important, is it!?)

So, in light of the latest Liberal energy scam (as reported by John Ivison in "Ontario's largesse just an illusion", National Post, Nov.19, 2010) we should also look back, for context, to remember Smitherman'sdoozy of a blatant lie back in May 2009, when he was pushing his smart meter scam and his greenshevikbolshevized energy fiasco onto Ontarians:

"Let me say a word about price. The weighted average market price for electricity in 2008 was 5.2 cents a kilowatt hour, down from 7.2 cents in 2005, and less than the average price of 5.5 cents since the market opened seven years ago. About 40% of Ontario’s electricity production is subject to regulation. This has contributed significantly to stable prices for Ontario consumers.

Through our projected investments and expenditures as part of the Green Energy Act, electricity prices are expected to rise approximately 1% annually, on average, over the next 15 years for ratepayers. Once Green Energy Act initiatives become implemented, an additional $900 million will be spent on conservation strategies across energy and electricity sectors over the next three years. By 2025, these investments, in addition to existing and other planned programs, should help a typical family in Ontario reduce their electricity consumption by 15% to 20%. "

What a piece of Liberal bullshitmanship.

'Oh, yeah, just trust me' says this McGuintyasslick - 'hydro rates will only go up about 1%' !!!!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Take a look at the Nov.17, 2010 Question Period at Queen's Park at about the 59:00 minute mark of the video, starting from where Howard Hampton asks McGuinty's government to explain why American firms are claiming they can sell propane in Ontario without charging the HST. Look at how Jim Bradley swivels around and smugly blames the federal government!! Bradley keeps on blabbering on in the foreground as minister Aggelonitis, standing behind him, tries to give a typical Liberal non-answer to the question; when Hampton then follows-up asking whether these companies meet TSSA standards, Bradley can still be heard spouting off about Jack Layton and Harper!!!

below: the broken urn is at the right; underneath it, the unsightly pavement is cracked and heaving.

(below: in the left distance is the Niagara Falls War Memorial)

above: avoid the dirty, peeling benches in Oakes Garden, and the holes dug into the gravel walks.

*

So, isn't it nice now to see that the Niagara Parks Commission has enough cash to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses - such as for booze, coffee, and roller-coaster rides - while the park areas are allowed to decline and suffer?!?

"Niagara Parks Commission chairwoman Fay Booker agrees someone's feet need to be held to the fire over the $395,000 in expenses recently-departed executive Joel Noden racked up over three years.

The question Booker is asking now is, whose feet? And how much heat?

"People should be held accountable for their responsibility," Booker said Wednesday, after Noden's controversial expense records were reported.

She said she agrees with Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor that someone's job might be on the line. Craitor told QMI Agency Tuesday whoever approved the expenses "doesn't belong in the parks commission," but wouldn't say who should go because he didn't know which manager should be held accountable.

"I don't disagree with Mr. Craitor in terms of his expectations. A part of what we now need to do is go through an audit and review who should be doing what and whether that was being done properly," Booker said.

Noden left his $130,000-a-year job where he managed the government agency's revenue, marketing and business development a week ago.

"I don't think we can wait six months. I think we have to resolve it over the next few weeks," said Booker, an accountant specializing in auditing and corporate governance.

Her investigation will look at whether Noden's expenses — which included an $1,800 nightclub outing, a $199 liquor store trip, $23,000 for out-of-pocket expenses including four tickets to a Las Vegas roller-coaster and even a pound of Starbucks coffee — were "appropriate and reasonable."

"If they were not, then who needed to be double-checking that, who gave approval for them to be incurred? If they're not appropriate, who's responsible for allowing them to go through?"

She'll be looking for explanations for why each expense was necessary. For example, if Noden was being reimbursed for buying coffee for his office, that might be appropriate, she said.

The Globe and Mail reported general manager John Kernahan and corporate services director Bob McIlveen disagreed over which one of them was responsible for overseeing Noden's expenses. Kernahan said he delegated that task to McIlveen, despite his holding a position equal to Noden in the agency's hierarchy.

QMI Agency has not been able to contact Kernahan or McIlveen despite repeated calls this week.

But Booker was clear. She thinks Kernahan is responsible for the directors under him.

"My expectation is that the general manager approves the expense reports … It's not peer-to-peer," Booker said.

Kernahan's own expenses are scrutinized by Booker, as are the expenses submitted by the 12-member commission. That's a change she made in July. Before that, it was up to Kernahan to approve the expenses of the government-appointed members who are his political masters.

When Booker was asked if it was strange the manager would oversee his bosses' expenses, but not those of a manager who served under him, she said: "That's why I changed it."

A string of expense scandals at government agencies proves it's Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government that should be fired, not bureaucrats in the agencies, said Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod.

"He keeps making promises that it wouldn't happen again … Lo and behold, it happens again," said MacLeod. "The only way people are going to get change in Ontario is to fire this government."

Controversies over expenses at other government agencies have dragged down top managers.

In 2009, McGuinty apologized to Ontarians over an expenses scandal at eHealth Ontario and fired chief executive officer Sarah Kramer. Freedom of information requests revealed the electronic health records agency issued millions of dollars in untendered contracts, incurred lavish expenses and produced little to show for $1 billion in taxpayers' money.

In August 2009, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan fired Kelly McDougald from her job as chief executive officer of Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. Duncan also forced the entire board of directors to resign.

In 2002, the Conservative government of Ernie Eves fired Eleanor Clitheroe, the $2.2-million-a-year CEO of Hydro One, the publicly owned electricity transmission company.

At Queen's Park Tuesday, Tourism Minister Michael Chan said Booker, appointed in the spring to head the provincial agency whose annual budget is about $77.5 million a year, has made "significant changes to the corporate culture" and its decades-old reputation as an old-boys' club.Booker said that's what she understands her role to be.

"As I identify an inappropriate procedure, we make a change," she said."

*

This stink at the Niagara Parks Commission is getting worse by the day: just yesterday, on Nov.17, Laroque had reportedCraitor telling us he didn't know who should be held responsible!

Obviously Kim 'hey, what's happening now, dude?'Craitor would like us to believe his Liberal government has nothin' to do with any of this, eh - why, they're the saviours here, doncha see; they'refixin' things! Why, during Question Period on Nov.16, 2010 at Queen's Park, Liberal Michael Chan even blamed the Conservatives - for hiring Noden!![See Chan's "answer" to Lisa McLeod's question in the Queen's Park Nov.16, 2010 Question Period video, at about the 53:oo minute mark]

Fuggedabout the fact that Craitor and McGuinty's Liberals have been the overseers of the NPCsince their 2003 election!

Forget about the fact that this all happened under Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's very nose, in his own riding, down the street from his office - yet, Craitor (apparently) was so busy elsewhere he blissfully didn't know what was goin' on, until that freedom of information request was made by the Globe!!

I guess if not for that little inconvenience, Craitor would still be staggering around in his usual Liberal 'don't worry, be happy' fog of ignorance.

McGuinty should do the right thing, and fire the accountable (isn't he ultimately responsible?!) minister, Michael Chan, in the same way minister David Caplan was shown the door for Smitherman's pile of crap. Except that in Caplan's case, McGuinty delayed and waited, first smelling the political air to determine how bad the repercussions of Smitherman'seHealth scandal might become [...and these were the first revelations, back in 2009, not the further ones which were still to come in 2010!]. Caplan was eventually sacked.

Hopefully Chan will get the boot a lot sooner. It would be nice for someone (but certainly not any St.Catharines Standard reporters, mind you!) to take a take a look at MPP Jim Bradley's tenure as Tourism Minister, and see whether Ole Jimmy turned a blind eye to the cosy shenanigans over at the NPC.

What's also distressing in all this, as we hear of these outrageous expenses, is the rather tatty and unkempt look many of the Niagara Parks' areas seem to be in. Tall weeds growing in swaths along River Rd., the Maid of the Mist elevators with graffiti and broken, unrepaired electrical boxes, cracked sidewalks all over the place, Oakes Garden is really showing its age, with benches so dirty and peeling no one would want to sit there, the park restaurant looks like it's barely being held together, in severe need of paint, as do the areas around the Aerocar - in fact, many places along the river need paint and maintenance. And that multi-million dollar Fury attraction which Noden was "instrumental" in developing - it's apparently not really that great of an attraction.

This Parks Commission looks like it has been letting things slip for years. We got an unexpected glimpse of this 'old-boy's club' institutional torpor when Bob Gale brought the Maid of the Mist lease question to the public's attention not that long ago.

Apparently, there is a lot more under the surface that no one's bothered to look at.

Then imagine being told you have to be flown out of country to do that.

Klimek recalls a patient several years ago who was of Middle Eastern background and who had a name similar to one on the "no-fly" list.

You may be critically ill, but you still need a passport to get into the U.S.

"To cross the border, Homeland Security has to let you in," he said in an interview.

The Ministry of Health says fewer patients are now being shipped out of province for neurosurgery.

In 2008/09, 120 patients went out of country for neurosurgery.

In 2009/10, 202 patients went out of country. So far in 2010/11 (April 1 to Sept. 30), only 41patients have gone out of country. That's still seven people on average a month who are sent out of province. It makes you wonder if it's cheaper to send patients to Buffalo than treat them here. "The improvement this fiscal year is due to the establishment by the ministry of an Emergency Neurosurgery Access Program," said ministry spokesman David Jensen.

"The program also provides $400,000 to each of the 10 neurosurgical centres to help reduce the number of out of country transfers," he said.

While it's good that things are improving, what does it say about this health-care system we cherish? We like to feel so superior to the Americans because we have publicly funded health care.

Yet when the going gets tough, when our system has no space, they're the first people we turn to for help."

*

MPP Jim Bradley is the Liberal poster boy for bashing the American health care system. Bradley loved to laugh at and deride the American health care system - even as his Liberal hypocrites sent patients to Buffalo; and while other health-care-seeking Ontarians just left McGuinty's wait-time infested province on their own. Bradley and Smitherman downplayed this trend as 'anecdotal', as hear-say, as an aberration. McGuinty's Liberals wrapped themselves in the Canadian flag of Tommy Douglas as they bashed the same U.S. system that helped Ontario's patients time and again while the Liberal's health monopoly could not - see here; here; here; here; here; here; here - or see any of the hundred 'Liberal healthcare duplicity' links below.

And why hasn't MPP Jim Bradley yet bothered to publicly explain why his health monopoly failed to provide for Helen Harris, who was shipped off to the States from Bradley's own single-payer nirvana in St.Catharines, to die in Buffalo? [see also here; here; here]
*

"A Niagara Falls publishing company was allowed to skirt government rules against sole-source contracts because it had newspaper boxes with the name "Niagara" on them and it published an existing hotel-room magazine, a spokesman for Tourism Minister Michael Chan said.

Chan's office provided some more details Friday about why he approved Niagara's regional tourism organization's hiring of Rev Publishing in May to create a "destination magazine" to promote Niagara's tourism offerings.

The tourism organization -- one of 13 new bodies created by the province last year -- spent $500,000 in public money and $250,000 in member contributions to commission 500,000 copies of Niagara Today, a 96-page magazine. They were to be distributed in the Greater Toronto Area.

The tourism group did not seek bids from competing publishers.

In a seven-sentence e-mail, Chan's spokesman, Mukunthan Paramalingham, summarized the four points the Niagara tourism organization used to justify a sole source contract:- Rev Publishing had "significant" Niagara-related content ready to go.

- Rev was the only publisher that maintained "Niagara-branded" street boxes in GO stations.

- The street boxes, printing and distribution were "an important tool" for promoting the Niagara region.The explanation came a day after Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor called on the board of Niagara's regional tourism organization to publicly release whatever documentation it used to convince ministry officials to exempt them from a rule requiring government contracts to be subject to a competitive bidding process.

The head of Niagara's RTO says it has been "as transparent as we can" and insists it played by the rules when it gave the untendered contract to Rev Publishing.

"I trust the folks around this table. They vetted it and decided it was a good project," Dragan Matovic, chairman of the Niagara's regional tourism organization, said during a board meeting Friday.

Matovic did not return media calls asking whether his board would release the information Craitor said it would help restore public confidence in the regional tourism organization. In an e-mail he said he would ask the board about releasing it and respond later.

Matovic said Friday he was not at the May meeting where the board decided to give Rev Publishing the magazine contract.

Former Niagara Parks Commission executive Joel Noden, who represented the government agency on the tourism board, was co-chairman when the magazine contract was issued.

Noden did not attend Friday's meeting of the tourism organization. He left the parks commission Tuesday.

In most cases, government rules require regional tourism organizations to "obtain a minimum of three written quotes" for goods or services worth more than $5,000.

But they're allowed to skip that tendering process and pick just one source when the expertise is "specialized and is not readily available."

Those rules are outlined in the agreements between the Ministry of Tourism and its regional tourism organizations. Representatives from Ontario's regional tourism organizations were reminded of those rules as recently as Nov. 7 at a summit of tourism officials.

Matovic said the organization, formed in May to promote Niagara's tourism industry, has abided by the Ministry of Tourism's requirements for managing the $3.5 million Queen's Park made available to Niagara this year.

Known as RTO No. 2, the group of tourism industry representatives will formally become the Tourism Partnership of Niagara when it's incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation in December.

The creation of regional tourism organizations to better promote an area is part of the Liberal government's plan to strengthen the tourism industry.

Niagara's organization came under scrutiny this week after revelations surfaced it hired Niagara Rev Publishing without asking competitors if they could do the work better or cheaper. Ontario's Liberals came under fire last year over the lack of competitive bids at eHealth Ontario, prompting Premier Dalton McGuinty to issue a directive ending single-source contracts in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

Despite the new rule, Ministry of Tourism officials granted an exception to Niagara's RTO because its magazine needed to be printed and distributed before the start of the 2010 travel season.

Friday's explanation clarified what Chan said Wednesday when he said ministry staff accepted the explanation Rev Publishing' had an "exclusive" arrangement to distribute magazines at GO Transit stations in the Greater Toronto Area.

"We needed these GO boxes as a vehicle to distribute these magazines," Chan said Wednesday.

But a GO Transit spokeswoman told The Review the provincial agency doesn't have any exclusive deals with any company for the distribution of newspapers or magazines at GO stations.

"GO has always followed an open policy about the distribution of publications. We do not currently have any exclusive arrangements on our system or at our stations," GO spokeswoman Vanessa Thomas said.

There are 20 publishing companies that distribute two dozen publications at GO stations, including Sun Media and Torstar, both of which have subsidiaries that publish Niagara-based magazines.

Craitor dropped in to Friday's board meeting to tell members in person they should release all the details behind its decision to solesource the magazine contract.

"The best people to ask are the people who made the decision," he said.

But the government itself refused a media request to release the information it received from Niagara's tourism organization.

Despite the controversy over the untendered contract, Craitor said he had faith in the regional tourism organization and the tourism-industry representatives leading it.

"It's a bit unfortunate we had a bit of a bump. We can clear that up," Craitor said."

*

Talk about these government agencies circling the wagons on this contract: this 'open-tender' idea looks like it was designed to fail with skewed requirements; now, inconsistent backpedalled stories are justifying the decison.

Take a look at one of Liberal tourism minister Chan's main "reasons" for handing out this sole-source contract: that Rev had some kind of supposedly-exclusive street box arrangement with GO Transit. GO, meanwhile, says they have no such arrangement. Who's telling the truth here - McGuinty's Liberal tourism minister, or GO?!

Furthermore, if the reason/excuse for handing out this untendered contract was based on the recipient company having some kind of 'exclusive' arrangement with GO, then it practically makes having ANY bidding process an outright sham anyway, seeing as the whole thing - according to the Liberal tourism minister Chan himself - revolves on a bidder already having accessto this so-called 'exclusivity' deal with GO!
Any other 'bidder' would be precluded from the get-go, making the 'bidding process' a pointless, rigged deal. So why bother having any bids - right?!

Is that what really happened here? And now the Liberals are burying themselves deeper in shit because of their unconvincing, after-the-fact, backpedalled excuses.
*

Paul Krugman, he of the N.Y. Times, the left's cherished Nobel prize winning economist-savant finally admitted the truth about Obamacare's death panels: "Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says the only way the U.S. will get its debt crisis under control is by the use of "death panels" and a national sales tax.

The national sales tax, referred to as value-added tax (VAT)m which governments across Europe use widely, will help cut the U.S deficit, Krugman argues.

Krugman made his comments on ABC's “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” during a roundtable discussion about the economy and the recent findings of the U.S. Debt Reduction Commission.

Here's the key excerpt:

"Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now."

This deity of the smug left - who, for example, on Aug.14, 2009 denied and ridiculed Sarah Palin's correct assessment of the Democrats' attempts to socialize health-care [while pretending that's what they weren't going to do!] - now admits the truth and confirms that Palin was (and is) right!

Krugman - to the left's horror, no doubt... ohhh can ya just see poor ole Jon Stewart just rooollllling his eyes in agony ...also openly confimed that Obamacare was part of a larger Democratic attempt to raise ANOTHER tax - a VAT - while ALSO advocating that death panels would be needed to save money.